by Gabi Moore
“I keep telling those people they should make it clear what people are buying,” the lady behind the new counter grumbled. “Too many people end up here clueless, and it’s not my job to straighten them out. How much money do you have left?”
Dion opened his wallet and showed her the bills.
“The problem is the date on the currency,” she told him. “I can’t use the cash because my bank would contact the FBI about counterfeit bills. I don’t need those kinds of complaints. So do you drink coffee?”
“Here,” the woman said before they could give their answer, sliding them two cups. “These are on the house. Milk and sugar is behind you. I recommend staying inside this place, as you don’t want to be trapped outside when the door activates.
“Looks like we have another fifteen minutes,” Dion said as he looked at his watch. “Anything we need to know about where we are?”
“Other than the fact that you’re in Chicago? Not really. We’re near the university, and no, they still don’t have a football team. So I get to avoid the booze-happy crowds that come with them. I’m slow today because it’s between terms, but the traffic should pick up next month.”
“You take any cream in yours?” Lilly asked Dion as she poured milk into her coffee.
“I like mine black, thank you,” he said.
They went and sat down at a table.
“Next time I walk into a store I don’t know,” he said to Lilly, “I will ask exactly what I’m paying money to have done or buy.”
“Look on the bright side. It got us away from Karanzen’s goons for a while. I think you spent your money well.”
“But it means less time to find the Elemental Grandmaster when we return.” Dion reached into his blue jean jacket and pulled a piece of paper out of one of the pockets. “I’ve been looking for this a long time.”
“What do you have there?” she asked.
“Nothing much, just what I have to tell the Grandmaster when I find her. She will know I’m genuine by what I say to her.”
“I’d think you could make something happen and that would convince her.”
“Doesn’t always work that way. All kinds of people can show her little tricks and try to deceive her into thinking they are elemental workers. If she grants full power on anyone who doesn’t deserve it, imagine the kind of ruckus it could cause. No, she has to know I’m someone who has spent years working toward the day when I can finally present myself to her.”
Dion and Lilly chatted a bit longer, until he looked at his watch again. “Time to go.”
They returned their mugs to the counter and thanked the woman. “No problem,” she said. “At least you speak standard English. You would be surprised at the kind of people who come through the door. No one has ever shown the least sign of violence; I think the corporation has a way to screen them out.”
Dion and Lilly walked to the door and waited a few minutes. Finally, Dion looked at his watch and announced it was time. He reached down and opened the door.
And discovered a closet on the other side.
“You think something might have gone wrong?” Lilly asked him. “I’m sure this is the door we used when we came in here.”
Dion shut the door. “I might be off a little bit with my watch. I set it this morning, but it has a tendency to run a little slow.” He reached over, grabbed the door handle again, and opened it. This time the room they had first used was visible on the other side. The same woman stared at them from the counter.
“Hurry up,” she told them. “You’re not the only people who want to use that door.”
They walked on through and shut it behind them.
“Nice trip?” the first lady behind the counter said. “Did you get to see what you wanted on the other side?”
“As much as we could in thirty minutes,” Lilly told her. “Coffee was expensive in Chicago.”
“Oh, that place,” she said. “Well, next time spend more money and you’ll get to spend more time when you go. I’m sorry, but, as I said, our insurance company makes it expensive to send people in that direction. And don’t even ask for dinosaurs because they won’t cover it.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dion said as they headed toward the exit of store.
The two security guards were still outside. One was circling around, the other sat on at a table directly across from them. It was obvious they wouldn’t allow them to travel anywhere unobserved.
“How much time do we have?” Lilly asked him. “This place will be closing soon.”
“Well, we spent about….” He looked at his wristwatch. “Oh, that’s funny.”
“Define ‘funny’.” Lilly said. “I don’t find much of what has taken place today very funny.”
“According to my watch we were only inside that store a few minutes. I thought we spent a good half hour and then some inside there because we went to that other place. But my watch might not be working very well.”
“Let’s check out the clock in the tower,” Lilly said, “you can see it through the skylights.”
They looked up and saw that it matched the time on Dion’s watch.
“Guess time has a different meaning inside that place,” he said.
“The places we discover in this mall continue to amaze me. We just left a store where you can buy time and have to find a pharmacy where the pharmacist is a grandmaster of the earth element.”
“I’m sure there are plenty more to be discovered,” Dion said.
They continued on their way until they reached the escalator, which Dion wanted to use to get to the second floor of the mall.
“Do we really have to take this?” Lilly asked him. “These things give me butterflies in my stomach. Is there a stair case we can use someplace?”
Dion scanned the mall until he saw a staircase at one end of the concourse. “There, we can take that one.” This seemed like a real good idea when the two security guards who’d followed them were busy in their direction.
Dion cut through the thinning crowd with Lilly and headed toward the stairs. The security guards kept pace with them, always making sure they were within some kind of visual range. He didn’t care. As Dion had no intention of causing trouble, he didn’t care what they would do if they caught up with him. The encounter Officer Karanzen had with his grandfather was enough to put him at bay for the time being. Right now, the important thing was to get to the pharmacy upstairs. They only had so much time to do it and find the Grandmaster.
They whisked up the stairs upon reaching them and turned to watch the one security guard still in pursuit keep up with them. Dion and Lilly managed to reach the top of the stairs with no incidents and continued down the upstairs concourse in the direction of the pharmacy. Dion glanced back to notice the lone security guard following at an acceptable distance. He recognized this one: it was Bayer. Naturally, the bow hunter would be the one to give pursuit. No doubt, he felt he was tracking them through a forest of some kind.
They turned the corner to head down the section of the mall to the location of the pharmacy. There were few people in this part, but it might have something to do with the lateness of the day. The mall was emptying out as the shopping day came to a close. Soon, the PA system would announce the mall closing and everyone would have to make their final purchases and leave. Including Dion and Lilly.
The bull was positioned directly in front of the pharmacy. It was large and sat on a metal stand. It was made of black plastic and offered anyone a chance to ride it for a small coin fee dropped into a slot. It was made to look dangerous and had a red mouth with blazing eyes. On its back sat the saddle anyone could try to ride. If they were so foolish.
Dion was surprised; it actually appeared to be some kind of mechanical contraption someone would place inside a mall. He’d seen all sorts of trains and toy rides kids could use in the children’s’ area; why shouldn’t someone try to install one for adults? It might be in front of a pharmacy and would, no doubt, hurt their business, but Dio
n doubted it was meant to be there very long. The whole reason for this mechanical bull was to keep him from accessing the pharmacy.
“That wasn’t here before,” Lilly said. “What the heck is that thing? A mechanical bull for adults? Who in their right mind would want to ride something like that?”
“I don’t think that bull is a ride,” Dion said. “There is something not right about this thing being placed in front of my destination.”
Lilly turned her head, looked at the bull several times from different angles and walked towards it. It still appeared to be made from plastic with some metal parts. Whoever created the bull did so with an adult in mind as it was too large for a child to ride. Next to the bull, on the platform it was mounted, was a box. The box had a coin slot in it with the sign “Twenty five cents to ride” on it. Lilly walked over to it and looked at the writing below the coin box.
“It’s made by some company called Echo Hills Princess,” she called to Dion. “I’ve never heard of them before, but there are plenty of companies I don’t know about. Do they sound familiar to you?”
“No, but I think you should get away from that thing. I just don’t like it. Strikes me as awfully suspicious being here.”
“The instructions say that one quarter gives you a ride,” she called out to Dion again. “They don’t say how long you get. I wonder what it does?”
“Lilly, really, I would get away from it.”
“Only one way to find out,” she said and opened her purse. Inside she found a quarter and dropped it in the slot. She stood back and looked at the bull. “Guess we’ll find out what it does.”
“I don’t think that was very smart, Lilly.”
She stood and watched the bull. It began to move. Slow at first, it picked up speed and rocked back and forth on the metal stand where it was mounted. To her it seemed obvious: the bull was designed to be a rocking horse for adults. All it did was satisfy someone’s inner cowboy for bull riding. It wouldn’t toss the rider up in the air as a real bull might, but it could give them the sensation of riding one, no matter how safe it seemed.
Lilly had watched bull riding on TV. She knew this contraption in no way simulated the dangerous sport. In bull riding competitions, a rider had to stay on a bucking full-grown bull for at least eight seconds. This device merely rocked back and forth. An elderly man could sit on it with no worries. It was clearly another attempt to make money off people’s desire to experience something dangerous in a safe environment.
After a few minutes, the bull quit rocking. Lilly turned back to Dion and held out her hands.
“See? Just a cheap mechanical contraption. Somebody put it here tonight, tomorrow, it will be downstairs where it will attract more traffic. Nothing to worry about.”
Suddenly, the bull climbed off the metal platform and stared at both Dion and Lilly.
The security guard who’d watched them from the distance had a smile on his face when the bull first began rocking. Now he was stunned. Among the many things he’d came to expect while being a security guard under Officer Karanzen, watching a mechanical bull come to life was not one of them.
The bull made a creaking sound when it climbed down from the platform. Lilly backed up to Dion and stood next to him. This was not something she would have expected to happen. She felt her flesh creep as the plastic bull lowered its head and stared at them. It didn’t blow the breath it lacked from its nostrils, which were painted on anyway, but the threat of violence was there just the same.
No one else was in this particular section of the mall. It was close to closing time and most of the shoppers were gone. This meant the bull had them to itself.
“I don’t believe this,” Lilly said to Dion. “Mechanical bulls just don’t walk on their own.”
“This one does. And it appears to be doing a very good job of it.”
Their only recourse was to back up. They slowly moved backwards, but the bull matched pace with them. The security guard stayed immobile where he stood at the entrance to this section of the mall. He reached for his belt radio, but found it missing. He backed up further to make sure no one else would come down this passage. Protecting shoppers from an animated plastic bull was not something in his job description.
“How does this thing work?” Lilly asked Dion. “Is it some kind of robot that was built just to come after you?”
“It’s another elemental,” he told her. “The ghouls weren’t successful, so whoever wants to keep me from the Earth Grandmaster’s pharmacy is desperate. They’ve found one of these things and brought it here. They must really want me to stay away if they’re willing to blow their cover by using one of this magnitude.”
“What do we do?” Lilly said to Dion. “I don’t think we can outrun it, can we? Do you know any place we can find a red tablecloth?”
“I don’t think that will work against this one,” he told her. “It has other attractors. I’m not sure what they are and we don’t have time to look them up.”
The bull squeaked as the plastic hooves raked across the floor. It moved in a poor simulation of a real bull, as its legs and hooves were but mere copies of the original. The bull began to walk in a pattern and Dion realized it wanted to keep them away from the rest of the mall. If it could keep them in the hall where they were right now, it could prevent their escape.
Dion grabbed Lilly and pulled her with him behind a table next to the Baron Sam’s New Orleans restaurant. It was his hope that the table might be used against whatever it was that animated the plastic bull, but he had no idea if this idea would work.
He positioned the table between them and the bull. The bull didn’t appear to be made from anything too substantial, but Dion worried that if it could be animated, it could do all kinds of damage. Worse, there was very little in the way of elementals he could work to counter whatever made the bull move. Other than a gust of wind, which would only annoy the thing, he could do very little.
Whoever had placed the bull in its location knew exactly what they were doing. They’d calculated Lilly’s curiosity to activate it by placing a coin in the slot. By her doing so, Lilly had keyed the bull to her and him as well. He knew the ultimate plan was to take them both out by any means necessary, but all they really had to do was keep him away from the pharmacy. His adversary had calculated if Dion could be kept away from the Elemental Grandmasters, he might lose heart and cease his quest. Did he not hesitate to go into the building until his grandparents and Edward appeared? The bull was an act of desperation by whoever wanted to keep him from gaining full power. And they were on the brink of success.
Out of the restaurant, a local woman walked into the hallway, just behind Dion and Lilly. She stopped when she saw the bull on the ground. In her world, plastic bulls simply did not become animated and move on their own. This had to be some kind of sales stunt. When she left the restaurant, the bull was not in motion and she turned to see the two young people staring at it from behind the table.
“What’s going on?” she asked them. “I need to get to the hospital; my shift starts in an hour. Is this some kind of new toy they’re trying to sell down at Children’s Outlet?”
“Don’t move and stay with us,” Dion told her. “Is there anyone in the restaurant when you left?”
“No, the baron was in the back working in the kitchen and I left the money on the table.”
In that moment she noticed the bull move. The plastic head of the creature turned and looked at the woman who had just left the restaurant. Its painted red eyes seemed to focus on what she had about her neck. The woman, who was in her forties, portly and who possessed a fancy wedding band, turned to look back at the plastic bull.
“Isn’t that amazing,” she said to Dion. “They must have all kinds of electric motors inside that thing to get it to move like that. My brother-in-law works on motors like that down at the plant near Kelltering.”
She had referenced an automotive factory, which employed thousands of people near a suburb of Scipio.
The creature had focused its attention on what the woman wore about her shoulders: a black necklace. Dion looked at it too and realized the necklace might be onyx, one of the blackest minerals that could be found.
“Is that an onyx necklace you’re wearing?” he asked her.
“Yes, my husband gave it to me as a present last month. I really don’t like it and have thought about taking it back to the place he bought it from and exchange it. I’ve only had it a week. I came here because I planned on taking it back, but I was distracted by the makeup department and you can’t imagine how much money I spend th--”
“I’ll buy it from you,” Dion blurted out.
“Seriously?” she said in disbelief, “You like it that much?”
“A hundred dollars,” he said, peeling out another roll from one of his other pockets in his jean jacket. “Here, count it yourself.” He handed her the money, as she looked it over.
“Well, if you insist. I don’t like it much and could use the cash. I’ll make up some story. I knew this day would work out better than the last.”
The woman took the necklace off and handed it to him. Dion handed her the cash roll and she walked away with a smile on her face.
“Where did you get that kind of money?” Lilly asked him.
“I keep a spare roll on me for emergencies,” he said. “This qualified.”
The plastic bull was still frozen with its gaze fixed on the onyx necklace Dion had in his hand. Dion waved it from one side to the next, the bull turning its head each time to follow the motion of the necklace.
“We have our red tablecloth,” he told Lilly. “Onyx is a mineral very much loved by the earth elementals. Whatever elemental used to make the bull move, it will never overcome its desire for the mineral. That lady wandering by with the necklace was just what we needed.”
“How do we use it?”
“I want you to start walking to the pharmacy. I’m going to lure the bull away with the necklace. It will follow me. Once I can find a place to isolate it, I’ll find some way to bind it in place with the necklace.”